Exorcising Preaching

Crafting Intellectually Honest Worship

Exorcising Preaching delivers an urgent call to expel unhealthy practices from sermons, liberating the preacher and the people. Nathan C. Walker reflects on ways to replace harmful habits with healing disciplines that reawaken the craft of preaching.

Description

Exorcising Preaching delivers an urgent call to expel unhealthy practices from sermons, liberating the preacher and the people. Nathan C. Walker reflects on ways to replace harmful habits with healing disciplines that reawaken the craft of preaching.

Exorcising Preaching is a result of the lessons Walker and his congregation learned during his seven-year tenure as senior minister and executive director of the First Unitarian Church of Philadelphia. The final chapter invites preachers to submit their own exercises to exorcisingpreaching.com. Preachers are encouraged to listen diligently for new ways to exorcise harmful practices and to systematize exercises that enhance the craft of preaching. Enter into collegial dialogue and experience a truth that “all of us are smarter than any one of us.”

Year: 2014

"Nate Walker has written a confession and not a 'how-to' book about preaching. He makes no claim to do your work for you. But he does open windows all around you to let in some fresh air. These poignant and transparent wrestlings of a young preacher in the early 21st century suggest that preaching is not a dying privilege, but a powerful and democratic engagement with truthfulness, an art form still emerging in our days. I found myself delightfully challenged even after 38 years of ministry myself."
–Rev. Dr. Mark Belletini, Senior Minister, First Unitarian Universalist Church of Columbus (OH)

“In the tradition of Emerson’s Divinity School Address, Nate Walker’s Exorcising Preaching is not so much a how-to manual as it is an urgent manifesto, a passionate call for preachers to rid themselves of cant, cliché, complacency, and all that separates them from their audience (the congregation) and their subject (the Sacred).”
–The Rev. Dr. Robert Hardies, Senior Minister, All Souls Church, Unitarian, Washington, D.C.

“Nate Walker has a passion for passionate preaching. In his latest book, he pokes and prods all of us to whom a pulpit has been entrusted, exhorting us to embrace vigorously our special responsibility. Like his ministry and his activism, his suggestions are bold, creative and provocative, focused powerfully on a witness of liberation.” –Reverend Burns Stanfield, Pastor, Fourth Presbyterian Church, South Boston and Instructor at Harvard Divinity School

Description

Exorcising Preaching delivers an urgent call to expel unhealthy practices from sermons, liberating the preacher and the people. Nathan C. Walker reflects on ways to replace harmful habits with healing disciplines that reawaken the craft of preaching.

Exorcising Preaching is a result of the lessons Walker and his congregation learned during his seven-year tenure as senior minister and executive director of the First Unitarian Church of Philadelphia. The final chapter invites preachers to submit their own exercises to exorcisingpreaching.com. Preachers are encouraged to listen diligently for new ways to exorcise harmful practices and to systematize exercises that enhance the craft of preaching. Enter into collegial dialogue and experience a truth that “all of us are smarter than any one of us.”

More Details

Year: 2014

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Journal Reviews & Endorsements

"Nate Walker has written a confession and not a 'how-to' book about preaching. He makes no claim to do your work for you. But he does open windows all around you to let in some fresh air. These poignant and transparent wrestlings of a young preacher in the early 21st century suggest that preaching is not a dying privilege, but a powerful and democratic engagement with truthfulness, an art form still emerging in our days. I found myself delightfully challenged even after 38 years of ministry myself."
–Rev. Dr. Mark Belletini, Senior Minister, First Unitarian Universalist Church of Columbus (OH)

“In the tradition of Emerson’s Divinity School Address, Nate Walker’s Exorcising Preaching is not so much a how-to manual as it is an urgent manifesto, a passionate call for preachers to rid themselves of cant, cliché, complacency, and all that separates them from their audience (the congregation) and their subject (the Sacred).”
–The Rev. Dr. Robert Hardies, Senior Minister, All Souls Church, Unitarian, Washington, D.C.

“Nate Walker has a passion for passionate preaching. In his latest book, he pokes and prods all of us to whom a pulpit has been entrusted, exhorting us to embrace vigorously our special responsibility. Like his ministry and his activism, his suggestions are bold, creative and provocative, focused powerfully on a witness of liberation.” –Reverend Burns Stanfield, Pastor, Fourth Presbyterian Church, South Boston and Instructor at Harvard Divinity School